Playboy Magazine

Playboy bunnies, 1968

Tribune photo by Michael Budrys

Branching out from the magazine business in the 1960s, Hugh Hefner opened a string of Playboy clubs. Here, flanked by Playboy bunnies in 1968, he pours Chicago water into the swimming pool of his newest club, in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Branching out from the magazine business in the 1960s, Hugh Hefner opened a string of Playboy clubs. Here, flanked by Playboy bunnies in 1968, he pours Chicago water into the swimming pool of his newest club, in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. (Tribune photo by Michael Budrys)

For a magazine that spawned dozens of imitators as it both chronicled and set a standard for sexual change in America, Playboy got off to a jittery start. Hugh Hefner had so little confidence in his magazine that he did not print the month of the inaugural issue--December--on the first cover.

He was not sure how long it would take to sell. The first copies went on sale on about this date; neither Hefner nor anyone else can pin it down exactly. Much to his surprise, the entire run of 72,000 copies quickly sold out, and his monthly was born.That first issue did contain something special: a nude calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe. It cost Hefner $200, a hefty bite from the $600 he had put up to go with the $10,000 he had raised selling stock to friends. "Playboy came at the right time, when the United States was experiencing a sexual revolution," Hefner would explain years later. "My naked girls became a symbol of disobedience, a triumph of sexuality, an end of Puritanism."

Hefner, a University of Illinois alum (Class of 1949) and graduate of Chicago's Steinmetz High School, catered to the country's growing public libido with the magazine's heavy dose of photo layouts of nude women plus news and advice about all things sexual. Mixed in were interviews with public figures, articles by highly regarded writers (early contributors included James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury and P.G. Wodehouse) and well-drawn cartoons.

By 1960, circulation had hit 1 million copies, generating magazine-only annual profits of more than $3 million. The clubs, clothing, private Boeing jet, television shows and movies--all displaying the famed bunny logo--were just around the corner.

Hefner's empire peaked in the 1970s; the magazine hit a circulation high of 7.2 million copies in 1972. After that, competition from publications that titillated readers even more ate into circulation, and Hefner came under constant attack from religious, feminist and political groups. A series of divestitures in the 1980s refocused Playboy's attention on the magazine alone.

In the 1980s, the Playboy mansion, backdrop for many of the magazine's photo shoots as well as Hefner's living, working and entertaining quarters, moved from its 48-room North State Parkway address to Beverly Hills. The company headquarters shifted from the old Palmolive Building on Michigan Avenue, renamed the Playboy Building when Hefner purchased it in 1965, to nine floors of offices at 666 N. Lake Shore Drive. Christie Hefner, his daughter, took charge of daily operations. But Hugh Hefner, who turned 71 last April, remained editor-in-chief of the magazine.